Visconti Grand Hotel is as tacky as Alberto himself. Gilded portraits of dead ancestors I’ve never heard of glare down at me. The center dome features a knock-off version of Michelangelo’s painting on the Sistine Chapel, and gold glitters on every visible surface.
It’s giving me a headache. Just another fucking reason I shouldn’t be here.
With my back to the navy sea, I lean against the open patio doors, crumpling a pack of cigarettes in the pocket of my tux. It’s not too late to leave. I’m sure Alberto wouldn’t notice; he’ll be too busy showing off his hot young fiancee to any old fucker that’ll listen.
Bitterness burns my throat, and despite the salty chill coasting over the planes of my shoulders, I’m starting to burn up.
A soft punch on my arm makes me grit my teeth. I slide my gaze lazily to my left, landing on Benny’s shit-eating grin. He’s got a cigarette tucked into the corner of his mouth, as if he’s just about to head outside for a smoke.
“You’re becoming quite the regular round here, cugino. Where’s the other two musketeers?”
“Rafe has business in Vegas, and Gabe’s…” I trail off, running my tongue over my teeth. Gabe turned up at my penthouse suite two days ago, demanding the keys to our parents’ house. He’s been there ever since, ripping out walls and fixtures, while listening to the type of rock music that makes my ears bleed. “Busy,” I finish.
He huffs out a laugh, taking a step out onto the patio to light his cigarette. He offers me the carton but I shake my head. “Gabe’s always fucking busy. Ah, well. I’m sure they’ll make the next one.”
Frowning, I tear my eyes from the ballroom and glare at him. “What did you say?”
He takes a long drag, then points his cigarette in the direction of the guests littered around the dance floor. “This isn’t Big Al’s first engagement party and sure as shit won’t be his last. I’m sure Rafe and Gabe will catch the next one.”
Irritation digs under my skin. He’s right, of course. Rory isn’t the first young, hot thing Alberto’s sunk his claws into, and when he’s got what he wants out of her, she’ll be cast aside and the next will take her place.
He’s crazy. I’m crazy.
“Hey, where are you going?”
But Benny’s voice is already a whisper in the wind. With my back to the ballroom, I take the steps to the beach below. Fast and two at a time, heading farther into the shadows where the gold lights of the ballroom can’t reach me. When concrete turns into sand underfoot, I stop and lean against a tree.
A cloud of condensation leaves my lips as I let out a heavy breath.
Fuck, I hate this place. I hate the Cove Clan, and I hate her.
I especially hate her. I hate that she’s exactly what I like: a girl who doesn’t back down when I have my wicked way with her. I hate the sound she makes when my belt meets her ass. I hate the shade of red her skin turns, and how that fucking ring glints on her finger when pleasure makes her hands clench into fists.
I hate that “look but don’t touch” is a hard and fast rule. It has to be, because I know the moment I taste those lips—either set of them—there’s no way I can go back to London.
I know I’ll have to stay and fight for her.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I hiss into the darkness, popping my knuckles. I’ve been on the Coast for over three weeks and I can’t tell if being here is solidifying the wall I’ve put up between myself and the rest of the Viscontis, or if Aurora is softening the cold, black mass behind it.
As I stare out to the dark sea, something to the right of the shoreline catches my eye. Instinctively, my hand reaches for the back of my waistband, only to find there’s nothing there. I close my eyes, mutter a curse word under my breath. See? The Coast is fucking with me, making me revert back to being the typical made man; reaching for a weapon I no longer carry at the mere sight of something mildly suspicious.
I need to get back to boardrooms and spreadsheets, sooner rather than later.
Steeling my gaze, I hone in on the silhouette. It’s a girl sitting on a large rock, her legs tucked up underneath her. My heart beats on the double, and I rake my fingers over my jaw.
Rory.
Mild irritation flickers over me. At her own fucking engagement party, she’s managed to slip away unnoticed. All those assholes up there care more about the champagne and caviar floating around on golden platters than they do about her safety. In fact, I bet Alberto will only notice she’s gone when he’s full of liquor and fancies something tight to grope.
Slipping my hands in my pockets, I stroll across the sand and come to a stop next to her. She slides a stick of Big Red into her mouth. As I follow her attention out to sea, I hear her breathing still.
“Is your ass still sore from this morning?” Nonchalance flecks my voice, like spanking Rory’s ass is something I have the pleasure of doing on the daily. Like I didn’t last just three strokes of my belt before having to get the fuck out of there.
Like I didn’t go home and fuck my fist in the shower.
“Not sore enough.”
I smirk at her attempt to match my indifference. It’s fucking adorable when she tries to act unfazed, because her body language always betrays her.
So, I call her bluff. “Then perhaps I’ll have to spank you harder next time.”
“Holy crow,” she hisses. “Angelo, there can’t be a next time.”
My jaw works, because I know she’s right. Of course she’s right—she’s my uncle’s fiancee and I live an ocean away.
Finally, I dare myself to look at her and immediately wish I hadn’t. She’s irritatingly beautiful, just like I knew she would be on the night of her engagement party. The fabric of her red dress spills over the rock she’s sitting on, and her long, blond hair falls over her shoulders in tight spirals. Her gaze clashes with mine, just as she pops a bubble.
My chest tightens.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
Huffing quietly, I shake my head. “You wore your hair curly again.”
Even in the moonlight, I can see her skin flush. “Yeah, Alberto wasn’t too happy about that.”
“Good.”
Under the heat of her bewildered stare, I shrug off my jacket and slip it around her shoulders. She pauses, wide-eyed, then pulls it tighter around herself, hiding a small smile in the fabric of the lapel. Fuck.
Without a word, I sink down next to her and pull the cigarette carton from my pocket. I slide one out and slip it between Rory’s parted lips. As my knuckle grazes over her chin, I fight against the instinct to grip her there. The flame of my Zippo casts a soft shadow over her face, and when I light the tip, she draws a slow sensual inhale that goes straight to my cock.
“Tell me a sin, Aurora.”
As soon as it leaves my lips, I wish I didn’t ask. Every time I’ve coaxed a sin from her, I’ve hoped it’ll be about her sluttiness. But if she tells me about it tonight, I might put my fist through a tree. No, tonight, I have a strange urge to get something deeper from her. I want to know what goes on inside her head.
She looks at me through the cloud of smoke, sadness swirling her irises. A long silence stretches out between us, before she passes me the cigarette and leans back on her palms, staring up at the starless sky.
“My mom died two years ago. Cancer. It started as a small spot on her lung but spread down to her liver and up to her brain. She fought like hell, but eventually, there was nothing more the doctors could do, apart from keep her comfortable. So, they sent her home.” She swallows. “Set up a full hospital bed in the living room, and nurses came twice a day to care for her. When the nurses weren’t there, she had this buzzer she could press, so my father and I would always know if she needed something. Well, one night, it went off. I leaped out of bed and ran into the family room to check on her. She was fine—in fact, she looked the most alive I’d seen her in weeks,” she adds with a soft laugh. “She’d only pressed the buzzer because she wanted to talk to me. She wanted me to promise her something.”
My back tenses as she shifts closer to me. Rests her head on my shoulder. I briefly close my eyes and swallow the thickness in my throat. I should tell her that this counts as touching, but I don’t. Instead, I bite out, “Promise her what?”
The top of her head grazes my jawline, and when she speaks, I feel her soft, hot breath on my throat. “That I’d never marry for anything but love.” She slumps against me. The urge to snake my arms around her and drag her into my chest is all-consuming, so I distract myself with a long drag of the cigarette. “The same night, she night passed in her sleep.”
I drop my head on top of hers, twisting to breathe in her cherry shampoo. “I’m sorry,” I murmur, my lips brushing over her golden strands.
“I always thought I’d keep that promise. No one ever thinks they’ll marry for anything but love, right? Well, the guilt started after I signed Alberto’s darn contract. And no matter how many times I called your hotline, I’ve never been able to shake the horrible feeling that I’ve let her down.” She sucks in air, then releases it in a shaky breath. “This is why we can’t go on like this, Angelo. He’ll find out eventually, and when he does, he’ll kill me and do whatever he wants with the Preserve anyway. Breaking my promise to my mom can’t be in vain.”
He’ll kill you anyway.
We sit in silence for a while, passing the cigarette back and forth. The tide’s coming in, the waves now breaking gently against the rock we’re sitting on. Above us, a brass brand breaks into an acoustic version of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely.” Cheers and laughter float down the steps and through the trees, and by the time they reach the quiet of the shore, they sound sinister.
As the water covers the sand around us, I tuck the cigarette into the crook of my mouth and bend down, drawing a line in the wet sand. “There.”
Rory glances down at it. “What’s that?”
“A line in the sand.”
Her mouth twitches. “Right, and we can’t cross it.”
The waves roll back in, lazily lapping over the line and melting it away.
“I know what it feels like to let down your mama.”
The statement slips from my lips comfortably before I can stop it. Rory drags herself upright, pins me with a curious stare. “You do?” she whispers.
With a heaviness brewing under my rib cage, I lean back on my elbows. It doesn’t go unnoticed how Rory’s eyes trail down my torso.
“Nine years ago, my mom died of a heart attack.” My gaze cuts over to hers, and when I realize she’s not shocked, I smile bitterly. “I’m sure you already knew that, because if there’s one thing the Cove Clan are good at, it’s gossiping. But what they don’t know is that the heart attack wasn’t natural.” Now, she looks shocked. “I was twenty-seven, had just landed in Devil’s Dip for the Holidays. I really didn’t want to come home that year, because I knew my father and uncles were planning to sit me down and have a serious talk about me taking over as Capo. I always knew I’d have to eventually, but business was booming in London, and I wasn’t ready to give it all up. The day I landed, I decided to take my mama to the fair. Remember the one that used to sit on the north headland over there?” I jerk my chin to the right side of the shoreline. “The one that burned down?” The one I burned down. She nods. “Every time I came home, I’d take her there. It was tradition.” I let out a sour laugh; run a hand over my face. “She fucking loved that fair. Not ‘cause of the rides and games, but because of all the gypsies in their wagons, promising to lay out her future for five dollars. She lapped all that shit up—anything to do with fate or fortune. In fact, she lived her life by it.”
A cold gust of wind off the Pacific whips past us, and I hear Rory’s teeth chatter. Instinctively, I turn to face her and wrap my jacket tighter around her.
“Eventually, Mama had visited all the psychics she wanted to see, so we turned to leave. But it was getting dark, and the fair was starting to get busy. We were heading out, going against the flow of the crowd as everyone poured in, so it wasn’t the craziest thing when a kid spilled a coffee all over her blouse.” I grind my molars together at the memory. It still burns, all these years later. “Of course, my first instinct was to crack this kid square in the jaw. It was a no-brainer. But Mama begged me not to.” My knuckles graze over the rock as I clench my hands into fists. “She always hated violence, which was why she always such a fucking saint to everyone. She believed her being good would cancel out the rest of the family being bad. She went to the bathroom, and I shit this kid up a little, but let him go.” I turn to face Rory, my nostrils flaring. “I fucking let him go,” I growl.
Her small hand curls over my fist. Warm and soft. “And what happened to your mom?” she whispers.
“I waited outside the women’s restroom for my mom to clean herself up. Five minutes ticked by. Then ten. Eventually, I started feeling uneasy. Something wasn’t right, I just knew it. So I went in, broke down the cubicle door and…” I glance up at the sky. Shake my head. “She was just lying there, slumped against the toilet. Dead.”
Rory’s gasp rings around my ears. “The coffee—”
“It was a poison solution that caused her to have a heart attack within minutes.”
“Oh my goose. Angelo. I’m so sorry,” she sighs. “And then your father…”
“Had a bleed on the brain three days later.” I sit upright, steeling my spine. I don’t want to talk about my fucking father right now. “Anyway, I couldn’t find the cunt from the fair for love nor money. It must have been a local, because I remember they had a Red Devil’s football team tattoo on their neck. But nobody on the Coast would talk. Especially not to a Visconti.”
“Is that why you left?”
“I left because Mama was gone. Somebody else in the family had to be the good to cancel out the bad. That’s what she would have wanted. Don’t get me wrong. I’m far from a saint. But I live by the law and keep on the straight and narrow, even though it’s near-impossible most days.”
“But Sinners Anonymous…”
“Yeah, I know.” I shoot her a look and lick my lips. “We all have our vices, Rory. Pulling a trigger or beating some asshole to a pulp once a month is mine. Hell, it’s the only thing that keeps me sane. And I justify it because everyone we kill deserves what’s coming to them. I’ve managed to convince myself Mama would approve—her sons are doing something good to cancel out the bad.”
Silence swirls between us. I can practically hear the questions bouncing around Rory’s head, all begging to be asked. But when we lock eyes, only one slips through her lips.
“So why are you back, Angelo?”
I can’t help but laugh. How many fucking times this question has been put to me since I touched down on the Coast. And yet, Rory is the only person who will get the truth.
“For the last nine years, my guilt has been an itch I can’t scratch. I need to find the man who killed my mom, and then I need to kill him.” Shock crosses her perfect features, but it’s gone as quickly as it arrived.
She nods. Buries her chin into the collar of my jacket. “When you told Alberto you’d take me into Devil’s Dip twice a week in exchange for my help, you meant it.”
My lips twitch. “You sound disappointed.”
Her chuckle comes out muffled. “I am.”
There’s that fucking feeling in my chest again. The heavy one that pushes against my rib cage, threatening to break what’s underneath. It solidifies what, deep down, I already know: I’ve been on the Coast too long and now I’m in too deep.
When I stand, Rory looks up at me, expectantly.
“Help me find him, and I’ll be on the next flight off the Coast. You’ll never have to worry about me ruining whatever deal you have with Alberto again. I won’t cross the line in the sand,” I rasp. Each word comes out strained, but I force myself to keep my expression neutral. But I can’t resist sliding my hand over her jaw, tilting her chin up to look at me. “Promise me something, Rory.”
I feel her pulse flicker against my thumb. “What?” she whispers.
“We’ll find him before your wedding.”
She pauses. “Why?”
“Because seeing you in your engagement dress is hard enough. But seeing you in your wedding dress?” A growl vibrates deep within me. I tighten my grip. “That’ll be fucking torture.”
A few minutes later, I’m standing at the bottom of the stone steps, hands in my pockets, watching Rory walk back up to her engagement party, taking a bitter part of me with her.
Something shifts behind a tree, catching my eye.
“Who’s there?” I growl, reaching for that fucking imaginary gun again.
Tor steps out from behind the brush, zipping up slacks. He sees me and stops, gaze thinning. His eyes dart up the stairs just in time to catch the trail of Rory’s red tress disappearing into the hotel.
Behind him, a blond emerges from the shadows, tugging down her dress, giggling. She steadies herself on Tor’s arm, but he brushes her off, not taking his eyes off me.
“Go upstairs.”
She looks at him, then to me and back again, and staggers up the stairs without another word.
Silence swirls us. I harden my jaw.
“Aurora’s a good kid,” he says icily, “and my father is a cunt. But don’t make me choose.”
My teeth graze over my bottom lip. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I respect you, Angelo. You’ve been more of a brother to me than my own brothers ever have. And fuck, Rafe is my best friend. But the fact of the matter is, Big Al is my father.” His fists clench at his side, his eyes flashing dark. “Don’t go after his girl. Don’t make me choose.”
We glare at each other for what feels like minutes, before he stalks up the stairs and back to the party.
I should have told him that it won’t come to that. He won’t have to choose because we drew a line in the sand.
But that’s the thing about lines in the sand. Eventually, they wash away, and you can’t remember where you drew them.
But when there are no boundaries, no lines to box you in, bad things happen. Wars happen, murders happen. And I can’t, won’t, stay on the Coast to prevent them.
So, instead of drawing that line in sand, I’m going to have to carve it into concrete.
